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Abstract
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“People and nations are motivated not only by
their immediate self-interest but by their deepest moral, ethical and
spiritual values.”
Maurice
Strong
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There is a large and growing consensus among international
observers that the environmental crises facing the human community
cannot be effectively addressed without confronting questions
of ethics. The scope of ethics reaches beyond the individual,
the community, the corporation and even the nation-state.
If effect, ethics begin where laws and power politics
leave off. Ethics guide human behavior when established legal
regimes or “rules of thumb” have not yet caught
up with rapidly changing ecosystem which we all inhabit.
Maurice Strong has long proclaimed the
importance of the ethical dimension in addressing the global environmental
crisis. Moreover, at the UNCED Summit in 1992 he underscored this
commitment by assuring that major non-governmental organizations (NGOs)
would be present at Rio in a set of parallel meetings known as the Global Forum to reflect their
ethical concerns in an effective manner to the global community.
In the face of the evident failure of
nation-state governments to address pressing issues like global climate
change and many other environmental problems enumerated in the Rio action
plan, Agenda 21, it is now more that ever important to engage the
NGO community to address the question of ethics. Among the human community a new
environmental ethic is needed if we are to survive as a species. What “got us here” cannot
“get us out of here.”
Changes will be required in our most cherished habits, behaviors and
beliefs if we expect to live for very long in a complex ecosystem which we
did not create and cannot control. These kinds of transformations can only
be achieved effectively by involving a full range of NGO organizations. Launching an effort of this scope and
magnitude is a fitting tribute to Maurice Strong’s life long ethical challenge
to the global environmental community.
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